Page 37 of The Summer Request
“I’m not sure,” she said. Her eyes drifted onto a line in the diary that was darker than the rest, as though Justine had been pressing especially hard.
Lou told me if I ever question his authority in front of the other Emeralds, he’ll make sure I end up penniless and without a friend in the world. He apologized this morning, but his words are ringing in my ears.
Lisa’s jaw tightened. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Michelle set her coffee down. “I guess I’m outvoted, then.”
Thirteen
The plan was simple enough. They’d get to the conference, register for a few sessions, and find Keith. According to Chloe, Keith was unhappy with Lou, and Lou wasn’t terribly happy either. Apparently, though, Lou wouldn’t fire Keith, citing that he “knows where all the bodies are buried.”
Val hated that phrase. It was a scummy phrase, used by scummy people who did scummy things. People like Lou Emerald.
While it would’ve been nice to swing by her apartment and pick up wigs for disguises, Val didn’t want to risk it. Michelle and Lisa already felt sorry for her because of her divorce. She didn’t want to raise questions about where all her money had gone, or have them force comments about how cozy her little dump of a place was.
They’d be fine without wigs. Lou wouldn’t be there. He didn’t actually attend sessions; he just showed up to collect the money at the end.
And boy did he get a lot of money. Their three “Emerald in the Rough” tickets, free of charge through Chloe, normally came in at four thousand dollars a person. Horrifyingly, that was the second cheapest package for the conference.
What a scam. Val remembered talking to Justine about the increasing prices years ago. Justine hadn’t liked it. She was the one who started the sessions all those years ago, and she’d always done them for free. It all began when bright-eyed eighteen-year-old Justine had moved to Seattle. Her first job was at Lou’s family’s smoothie café, a place called The Emerald Escape.
The first “Emerald Polishing Session” was when Justine invited some people to come to the café after hours to talk about their lives and their goals. It grew so popular that she’d had to find bigger places to hold the events, usually at parks to get “the extra benefits of nature,” as Justine put it.
Once she started dating Lou, however, everything changed. He convinced her they needed to train others so their “message” and good work could spread. He then started renting out large meeting spaces, and justified adding session fees to pay for the spaces, and to pay the trainers – though it was unclear if any of that money ever got back to them.
Justine went along with it. She wanted anyone who needed the “Emerald Way” to be able to attend. She would have preferred if it was free, but Lou said it was impossible if they wanted to reach more than ten people at a time.
She’d once told Val, her mood low and her face twisted into a frown, “Lou says it’s inevitable, and as we get more popular, we need to be more exclusive. I don’t know, though. His argument is we’ll be getting the people who most want to be here, but I feel like it’s just the people with the most money. Or maybe the most desperation.”
Lou was a master at manipulating Justine. He took her clear, pure-hearted vision and slowly chipped away at it until he had amassed what he wanted – a monstrous pile of money. Then he’d left Justine for a younger woman.
Not just one younger woman, actually. Justine discovered her marriage was over through Lou’s fourth mistress. The other three had then stepped forward.
Over the years, Val had many friends, both male and female, whose partners didn’t deserve them. She saw it as a spectrum, from the mildly disappointing to the truly Lifetime Movie-esque horrible partner.
Lou was the worst of all. It wasn’t enough to take advantage of Justine’s hard work and dedication. It wasn’t enough to leave her. He took everything, absolutely everything, he could from her, and left her confused and broken.
Then, to top it off, he killed her.
They got to the conference hotel the next morning just before seven. It was downtown, and their anonymous arrival went smoothly except for the two blocks where a homeless man followed Lisa. He was convinced she’d made a face at him when they were crossing the street, and he threatened to “teach her a lesson.”
Thankfully, his time never came, and they slipped into the lobby unscathed.
Signs directed them to the enormous front room of the conference center, with its thirty-foot ceilings and the welcome tables draped with white cloth that stretched the entire length of the room, at least fifty feet across.
The space was abuzz with excitement, and people chatted and drifted from side to side, past enormous banners of Lou’s smiling face. Val stopped to glare at one particularly egregious one, his bleached white teeth the size of her hand, declaring “Emerald LA Retreat 2022: The First Stop to a New You!”
Despite the high price tag, over four hundred people were in attendance, according to the glowing red sign providing a headcount. It looked like a scoreboard.
Ugh. These poor souls just wanted to improve their lives. Who didn’t?
And then there was Lou, ready to take advantage of them.
“Hi, and welcome to the Emerald Retreat,” said one of the young women behind the check-in desk. “Can I have your names, please?”
“Melanie Tenderhook,” Val said. “And my friends Tammy Tenderhook and Gloria Tenderhook.”
Val could see Michelle putting her hands on her hips out of the corner of her eye. She expertly avoided her glare.
